


One Week

by ladybugdays



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: ADHD, Arguments, Borderline Personality Disorder, Codependency, M/M, Medication, a little bit of angry shoving, and sabotage, bickering as a love language, no beta reader we die like men, two nerds communicate in their own nerd way, written by nerds for nerds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:42:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22739788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladybugdays/pseuds/ladybugdays
Summary: Fighting back came to Hermann about as easily as numbers. It was a comfort, in their world of glass and monsters, to have a companion that you couldn't break.In other words, Newt gave it one week until Hermann forgave him.
Relationships: Newton Geiszler & Hermann Gottlieb, Newton Geiszler/Hermann Gottlieb
Comments: 4
Kudos: 51





	One Week

**Author's Note:**

> This song was just too perfect not to use for a Pacrim fic.

Newt was a man of knowledge. Earning six doctorates required as much- a long with a dash of self-medicating, and a few days without sleep. But if given a pen, he could map out the circulatory system of a Kaiju on the back of a napkin. Newt knew most anatomy like the back of his hand- and he knew all of the bones in that, too.

But if his knowledge of anatomy came to any use, it was in finding nerves to get on.

Arguments weren’t new in his relationship with Hermann by any means. They’d exhausted every insult in English, and then in German, and then wrung out whatever was left of English again. It had been like that from day one; a dislike founded the moment their eyes met. Like two elements made just to react to each other.

(Hermann didn’t actually care much for chemistry.)

They’d gotten along famously in their letters, but that was only because annoying habits didn’t stick out so sorely when they were written down. Four years led to ten more, though, didn't they? Their collaborative efforts were irreplaceable.

(It was what Pentecost told them. But he was really telling that to himself. Which was why Newt always kept other Kaiju biologists occupied at social functions, before they could talk to his boss.)

Still, evidence could be pulled in the form of blue-stained fingerprints from Hermann’s chalkboard. They would prove that he his anger was never unfounded. Ten years they had been unsuccessful in carving out solo careers or killing each other. One  
probably had to come first.

Then again, anger was fire, and Newt loved fire. He especially loved Hermann’s fire, even if it was hidden beneath chalk and sweater vests. He couldn't be held accountable for reverting back to a playground bully, especially when he only instigated the half of it.

Fighting back came to Hermann about as easily as numbers. It was a comfort, in their world of glass and monsters, to have a companion that you couldn't break.

So when Hermann cocked his head to the side, frowning in that sharp way that he did, and told Newt that he was angry, Newt gave it a week.

* * *

“Is this seriously over the chalkboard thing?”

“You smeared a Kaiju stomach all over my equations!”

“Well maybe if you hadn’t thrown out my samples, I wouldn’t have wasted a perfectly good stomach on you!”

“They were well past our agreed expiration date, you insufferable-"

Newt didn’t care for whatever Hermann was going to call him. He didn’t care to hear his voice, either, so he cranked the dial on their shared radio until it was shaking. Freddie Mercury sang louder about the mystical Fat-Bottomed Girls.

They wrestled for the volume dial, naturally, and from there Newt’s only logical option was to sing in Hermann’s face. At the top of his lungs. Hermann looked almost like a ruffled bird, squawking and harping on him, so Newt couldn’t be blamed for finding it funny.

Then, of course, Hermann shoved him away. Newt’s elbow knocked against a jar of perfectly good formaldehyde. Which, of course, shattered over the ground. The substance would find a good home in the grooves of the floor- but there were far worse stains on Newt’s side of the lab already.

Newt snatched the chalk in Hermann’s hand as retaliation. He moved to face Hermann down from across the table, singing louder and louder and louder. He liked things that way. Music ran in him through both sides of his family. He could probably find music notes in the lines of his veins. Some days- most days- Newt had to get so much of his thoughts out on a table something had to carry him through it.

Hermann hobbled after him, vowing in rapid German that he would drop the God-forsaken radio into the nearest vat of entrails- which- rude- Newt needed those for the sake of comparisons. Newt was moved enough to step back, and Hermann, clearly intent on getting his chalk back, followed.

He was probably not so intent on slipping across a formaldehyde-soaked floor.

Newt scrambled to catch him, diving and sliding like a true rockstar. He caught Hermann by the skin of his teeth. And his knees- injuries there always took way too long to heal. Regardless- Hermann landed against Newt, and his cain landed with a sharp clack and rattle.

When Newt stopped shaking, Hermann was breathing hard; understandably flustered. Okay, maybe Newt was a huge asshole. He felt as much when he looked around at the mess they’d made.

That he’d made.

“I’ll clean it up,” Newt promised. He meant it- he did. Even if he was bad at it. A long time ago, he’d learned that things in his life didn’t get fixed. The resolution was breaking things on his own terms.

Hermann regarded him coolly. Newt couldn’t stand the cold- he felt it sharper than needles. And he knew needles, if his tattoos were any proof.

“I want you out of the lab for a week,” Hermann said, in the sharp, clipped way he reserved for very rare occasions. Newt hadn’t heard it used against anyone- only ever in resignation.

“I-” Newt felt protest rise up to the back of his throat as a familiar fire. His face was burning hot, hot, and hotter in the itchy type of flush that spread down his neck and arms. He would have been glowing red if not for the rainbow pallet needled into his skin. “One week?”

“One week,” Hermann resolved. His chest still shook as he breathed. “I don’t want to see you for a week.”

Newt’s will to apologize vaporized, and came out of his ears in the form of steam. “I need my equipment-”

“You erased one week’s worth of calculations,” Hermann hissed. He stood up, pushing away the hand Newt didn’t remember sticking out to offer him. Hermann stumbled with his cane, but eventually, he straightened. Newt worried that’d he would slip again, but Hermann Gottleib did not bow. He’d sooner break than bend.

“One week? I can do one week,” Newt challenged. “I could go a million weeks without seeing you, but by the end of one you’ll miss he so much you won’t ever-”

Hermann gave him a flat look. “One week, starting now.”

Okay, so Hermann would forgive him in a week. Starting now.

* * *

Newt decided that, Hermann be damned, he would get his work done. Even if he had to stuff it all into a smaller lab on the other side of the facility and never, ever leave again.

Whatever- right? Newton Geiszler was adaptable- like fire! He’d do well in any flammable setting.

Where had this lab been all those times they were sending in complaints about each other?

Newt brushed the dust off one of the blueprints left on a cluttered table. The name written at the corner was the same on a gravestone. An architect who'd died in an attack, while out touring that brilliant fucking wall.

There hadn't been anything left to bury.

The blueprints looked sick as hell beside his own note pads. And the rickety table for modems held up the tank he’d been storing his spare Kaiju stomach in.He couldn’t just stop testing the volatility of alien stomach acid, after all.

Newt burned a hole in his desk, and then resolved to map out his hand’s skeletal structure in pen. It helped him visualize the massive clawed ones depicted on his arms, and perhaps, help him think about what made their bones so different. Different star dust, maybe? Newt's brain chemicals were far more dust than star, but-

He looked at the clock. It had been two hours.

Time must have moved slower in a smaller lab.

* * *

Newt jumped from stomach acid to mapping out skeletal structures before night fell. He had long-since resolved not to sleep, just to prove he could handle even longer days. Besides, the meals he’d ended up skipping was nothing compared to the way a Kaiju skull looked in red ink. He’d have to file it in his folder of tattoo ideas.

Meds had gone forgotten in his departure, but Newt forgot to take them more often than not. One time, he’d put off his dosage long enough to think that testing Kaiju venom on fresh skin cells- the kind still living on his hand- was a good idea. Newt also had the lucky habit of dogpiling his ideas, and in the process of acting them all out, little things like mood stabilizers went forgotten.

Newt’s productivity lasted until he moved onto drawing out scenes from the movie was stuck in his head- Aquaman? Whatever it was, it made him crave sushi, but that only inspired him back to the Kaiju stomach.

One the morning marking thirty-two hours, Newt realized everything was his fault.

Five hours later, Hermann knocked on his door.

He knew it was him because he always knocked with his damned cane.

“Go away! You’re not supposed to see me, remember?” Newt didn’t bother looking up from his desk space. He was figuring out how to weaponize stomach acid on a rickety wooden surface - such thing required focus, delicacy, and Queen’s Day At the Races album blaring on a loop.

“You left your meds by the sink!” Hermann shouted through the door. Anyone would be able to hear the annoyance in his voice, but Newt knew him well enough to find the worry hidden underneath.

Newt looked towards the door, lip twitching. He could even picture the face Hermann was making, all pinched lips and narrowed eyes. Part of Newt wanted to open the door just to see if he was right. “On my side of the lab?”

There came a deep sigh, and then a faint rattle. “I’m going to leave these here, and all eight doses had better be in your stomach when you finally come out!”

“No promises!” Newt shouted back.

* * *

Because Newt was a genius, and a fucking rockstar, he ended up making a breakthrough before the three-day mark. Kaiju stomach acid could be neutralized by bar soap- or at least by Irish Spring. It finally had a purpose beyond covering up the smell of fermented Kaiju , and making the signs that one of his ex-girlfriends was a closeted butch lesbian abundantly more obvious.

He'd need to run a larger-scale experiment if he'd want to figure out how much it would take to ruin a live Kaiju 's digestion, which would be hours of the same repetitive experiment. Or he could just ask Hermann to run some numbers for him- a solution that gave them both something else to do.

It took tripping out of the doorway to remember why he was working from his room. Tripping over a tray with a bottle of meds and a cold breakfast, actually. Newt also realized, while looking down, that he'd lost his shirt.

Out of sight, forever out of mind.

Newt retreated back into his room. The bottle of pills went between a vial of alien venom and a tube of blue blood. The breakfast went into his stomach, since it beat the box of power bars he'd already eaten his way through.

Newt would have to smuggle an extra ration of tea for Hermann, once they were back on track. Maybe even some of the biscuits he liked. The dry kind, plain in every way but the raisins inside. If- assuming if- ever he forgave Hermann.

Which he totally wouldn’t.

* * *

Newt ignored the jolt to his hear when he heard a cane knock against metal. "Miss me that much already?"

"When I banished you from the lab, I never once said you had to hide like a mole!"

"Like they'd let me have a bigger lab for one week!" Newt shouted back, never mind the thought of applying for a new permanent residence. They'd both given up on trying years ago- and what was the point anyways?

"Well, you're the one at a loss then!" Hermann finished.

Newt pictured his expression again, and found that the itch to test his guess was stronger than before. Strong enough for Newt to stare at the door as the clack of a cane disappeared down the hall.

Newt scrubbed his face with his hands. His back ached from falling asleep at his desk twice over, and he had truly begun to smell. Mostly of Irish Springs.

His mind felt confined in a ten-by-ten space, but he'd survived captivity all throughout college. Admittedly, he’d had a window back then, a class of students that actually seemed entertained by his rants, and a pen pal to write to when nights were especially slow.

Damn Hermann for banning him from his spacious side of the lab- and for banning heelys on deck. He was just a grade-A bastard, that was his problem.

Newt tilted his chair onto its back legs, rocking himself back. Only in sleep was he off of his feet. Primary school teachers had kept Newt grounded by placing sandbags on his lap. After he’d put the back ends of chairs through their paces, a doctor had diagnosed him with ADHD. Homeschooling through his uncle had worked wonders for channeling his endless enthusiasm.

Then, by college, he’d gone to the end of his rope with his line of poor relationships and bad coping skills- (the infection born of his third tattoo was not his fault, okay?)- he’d gotten his diagnosis corrected to Borderline Personality Disorder.

It was one of the reasons his career options limited him to working with Hermann fucking Gottlieb. That, and his enthusiasm had gotten him punched one too many times to work with the German branch of K-scientists.

In retrospect, that was also a branch of his mania tree.

All of that to say, tilted back on his chair legs, Newt found himself trying to remember if he’d left a chair out for Hermann. He needed to sit down as often as Newt needed to pace. Hermann never talked about his disability- he never talked about much of anything personal with Newt. He didn’t need to. It was obvious when he dug his teeth into his bottom lip that he was in pain.

So someone had to avoid making a big deal about leaving a chair out on his side of the lab. And someone had to keep from yelling when Newt paced around over territory markers. Newt needed it.

He lacked it now.

Or- or just a distraction. If Newt needed a pick-me-up, there was always the option of watching X-Files, sans lights and sans company.

But Hermann was the skeptic and he was the believer, even if he wasn't the one who believed there was a God. Other than nature- because what the hell else would be in the ocean? If God was anywhere, it would be down where only her monsters trekked.

Monsters. Monsters were written all over his walls and his arms and probably in his blood, along with all of the music-

Hermann must have been relishing in the quiet. Newt had never been properly acquainted with the word in his life.

* * *

On the morning of the fifth day, Newt actually remembered to check the hall. The eggs and bacon were still warm, and medication went down easier with cold orange juice.

By then, Newt had been driven out of his room by the smell and the stinging itch his hands. He needed a shower.

Maybe he had underestimated how much he reeked. Based on the way heads turned toward him in the shower chamber, it was closer to rotting corpse than unwashed scientist.

A good, long rinse alleviated all of the world’s problems. He'd already decided that Hermann would be the one to apologize to him, and the thought brought him smugly back to his mini lab.

Where a team of men were hoisting his Kaiju stomach away.

"Hey! That's mine!" Newt scrambled to fight for the tank, trying his best not to gag by the affronting stench wafting out of the room. Maybe Kaiju stomach acid reeked worse than rotting sewage after all.

The man directing the thieves offered him a sour look in condolences. "Well, the door was left wide open, and we've had multiple complaints from everyone that’s come through this hall."

“What do you want me to say?” Newt demanded, throwing his arms up in the air. “Kaijus are potent, and that's a week’s worth of research you're throwing out! I need that!"

Newt could feel the man staring at his tattoos- jealous much? "You'll find it again in another week. I'm sure you'll have plenty of stomachs by the time you close the Breach."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

A crisp cough caused Newt to turn. Hermann stood feet away, leaning his weight against his cane and pinching his nose for dear life. “Gentlemen, there's no need to waste such…"Hermann winced,"valued resources. Have it sent back to our lab.”

Newt looked between his two adversaries. The leader of the thieves scowled. “You want this thing stinking up your workspace? Be my guest. Just don’t let it stink up the public hall.”

“Unless you want Pentecost to know you're interfering with our research," Hermann prompted. The thieves began to move in the opposite direction, taking extra care not to bump him as they passed him.

Newt watched the scene with mild amazement. "Uh, didn't know you suddenly valued alien organs so much."

Hermann's thin mouth curled into a private type of sneer. Under the ugly, fluorescent yellow light, he looked a cross between sickly and stubborn. "I still don't."

"How selfless of you, then, " Newt said, and he hoped Hermann heard the thank you crammed under the words. "You're a real life savor- it's such a hassle to apply for multiple parts after events- everyone just wants a piece of the Kaiju pie."

"It was the least I could do after filing half of the complaints they cited," Hermann said.

"Oh- oh really?" Newt crossed his arms over his chest. "Now what are you gonna do with it? Wring it in my filing cabinet?"

"You'd need a filing cabinet in the first place. Honestly, it's a wonder you haven't destroyed the rest of your research by leaving it out everywhere-"

Hermann straightened himself- still unwilling to release his nose. It granted his voice an even more nasally quality. "That being said, what do you expect me to do when the smell pollutes my half of the lab? I've already had to replace my chalkboards-"

"Eh? Just seal it up better than I did or buy a bulk pack of air fresheners."

"Our work space is not a rental car-"

"OuR woRksPace Is nOt a RenTaL cAr!"

Hermann sighed, and then gagged. The human taste buds did wonder to aid a sense of smell. "I'd hate for you to lose a week's worth of research. You'll be right back at it in a day and a half, I presume?"

Newt leaned in, butting into Hermann's personal space. "With you practically begging me to come back sooner-"

"Oh, shut up!"

"You miss me enough to be knocking on my door! All the way across the Shatterdome! Honestly, the smell wouldn't bother you as much if you weren't lurking-"

"It's hardly lurking when I need to make sure you haven't killed yourself in an explosion and the smell permeates the entire corridor! The stench is enough to kill a set of rangers, Jaeger or no!"

Newt laughed, surprising himself and Hermann alike. He hadn't realized how much he'd missed having banter. “Well then. Two more days, if you insist.”

(If Hermann did like chemistry, Newt would tell him that he was rather like oxygen. Highly reactive, despite what most might think, and also maybe kind of forcing Newt to breathe sometimes.)

* * *

Newt’s final decision was that he’d show Hermann up by beating him into the lab. Sleeping through twenty-five hours made waking up early easier- who knew? Glancing at his watch as if he didn’t care, with his sleeves already rolled up- he’d gone the whole nine yards.

It was almost reminiscent of their first meeting. Four years as penpals offered a promising start for two child prodigies in a doomed world. Newt hadn't slept at all the night before they were supposed to meet, and, of course, he started off the encounter by barging into the coffee shop half an hour late with his shirt untucked.

Hermann had not been impressed. Newt had called him a dick, and that much summarized the ensuing ten years of their friendship. (Because everything be damned, it was a friendship.)

When Hermann showed up at seven sharp, like he did everyday, Newt would give him a breezy smile and let him unlock the door. Cool and smooth like a bloody fucking rockstar, baby!

Newt kept tapping his foot at an impatient, jumping jack rythm that nearly matched pace with his heartbeat. Giddiness rose up in his chest, swirling and filling him with enough joy to make him float. Newt had to remind himself that he was going to work, not on a date.

He also had to scowl at himself for the comparison.

It took ten minutes for Newt to give in, and for once in his life, he sat down. With his back to the door, he could hear the hum of equipment marching steadily on. And… Queen?

Newt stood up and pressed his ear to the door. He could make out the tune of Somebody To Love- he knew it well enough to mouth the lyrics to himself. Newt could also make out stirrings in the lab. The clack of a cane against linoleum and concrete grew ever-louder-

Newt took several steps back. The lab’s door slid open, and Hermann stepped out. He flinched when he noticed Newt. “Dr. Geiszler-” he began.

“I know Queen when I hear it!” Newt blurted out.

Hermann’s grip on his cane tightened. “Well, perhaps you’ve forced me to grow dependant to working with background sound-”

There were countless replies Newt could offer- most of them a snidely scientific explanation on why Hermann associated productivity with Newt’s Spotify playlists. Instead, he simply grinned and said, “Oh, you missed me. Admit it, Herms! Acknowledgment in the first step-”

“I’ll have you know I’ve had the most productive week of my life-”

“-what? Did you pull an all-nighter just to fill your chalk board with something that would impress me? And I thought you wanted me to start wearing my headphones when I work!”

“Für die Liebe- I have half a mind to ban you from the lab for another week!”

“Not if I ban you first!” Newt butt passed Hermann, already amped up enough to carry himself straight back to work. Hermann followed behind him without pause.

“Don’t think I haven’t drafted an official complaint to the Human Resources Department, Doctor Newton Geiszler!”

“So now you use my first name!”

It would be another day before either of them offered an apology. It would, of course, come in the form of tea and biscuits left on a clean desk, and a new set of headphones draped over a pile of blue-splotched paperwork, but it would be an apology nonetheless.

**Author's Note:**

> Me, a baby lesbian, using Irish Springs: hope this doesn't awaken anything in me 
> 
> Come yell at me on Tumblr! @ladybugdays


End file.
